


Ever Forward

by Lesca Fenix (lescafenix)



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Gen, Pre-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1659749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lescafenix/pseuds/Lesca%20Fenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What propels a man who has lost everything forward still? In the aftermath of his confrontation with Lady Yunalesca, Auron reflects on this and on the things he never said to Braska when he had a chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever Forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Spindizzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spindizzy/gifts).



> Request: Auron, Braska, Jecht (or Auron/Braska/Jecht in any order or permutation): quiet moments, building respect, when to hide and when to run away. BASICALLY I would love to see any fic about these three on the road, dodging/fighting fiends, being friends (or not), what they're honest with each other about and what they're not.

The smell of a fire long reduced to embers lingers still on the air, the comforting scent tinged with blood and sweat. The shadows play tricks with my mind and my obscured sight. I am so tired. Time has ceased to have meaning--has it been days? Or have my eyes only drifted closed long enough for my mind to conjure the worst nightmare possible? For a moment I can make out your silhouette, perched upon the boulder across from the spent fire, while outside my line of sight Jecht pokes at the ashes with his sword.

“Always believed you’d get me back to Zanarkand,” Jecht had complained when we had reached this spot. “Didn’t think to ask if it'd be in one piece when you did.” By Zanarkand, he had given up complaining or railing against the idiosyncrasies of our journey. At the beginning Jecht had complained about everything; you always had a patient, ready answer for him. It seemed as though you were reminding yourself the purpose behind every nonsensical thing we did even as you were educating Jecht. Should we actually have listened to his cynicism? Was our conviction your undoing?

“This is a contemplative journey. The point is the journey; not the destination. We walk to cultivate focus and intention. My mind goes where I direct it, and I direct it forward.”

You sometimes joked that you looked forward only because your headdress would not allow you to turn your head enough to look behind. As much as it bothered me when you would make jest about our journey and about the spiritual community that had been our lifeblood before we were both cast out, it only seemed to draw Jecht closer.

You can— _you_ _could_ make sleeping outside in the chilly air of Macalania, haggling with a crooked Travel Agency owner or negotiating our way around piles of shoopuf dung sound like a philosophical experience, something to be embraced as life-changing. My Lord, I would have believed every word, and I think Jecht would have as well. If only you had been better able to keep your composure and not allow your lips to twist with mirth at your secret.

What I would give to see that smile again. What I would give to hear you caution me once more to not rush with haste into the future. As we sat at this camp outside the ruined Zanarkand, you looked prepared to get comfortable and stay a while, and I wanted nothing more than to enter the city proper before night fell.

I wanted it over with. I did not know why then, but the thought of prolonging our journey a minute longer was unbearable to me.

What a fool I was. What a fool I am.

“So… Braska… you scared?”

I can hear the echo of Jecht’s unexpected question growled out on the moaning wind as it chases itself through the spires of the ruined city behind me and my outrage wells anew. What manner of question was that to ask a Summoner, and at this place? You could not be afraid. It was not allowed. It was unthinkable. I had no desire to hear talk of fear or doubt, especially from you, my Lord.

But as always, you not only tolerated his question, you embraced it. As I close my eyes and a wave of exhaustion comes over me, I see your face illuminated by the fire, as though no darkness could fully cover you or hide you from me. You were ever present, like the sun on even the cloudiest of days.

“I have learned that fear is in reality a struggle against that which we cannot control,” you said. Your words were as slow and measured as our entire journey to this place had been, and you continued, eyes fixed on the city beyond us as you spoke. “I cannot begin to control what challenges may lie ahead, but I can control my footsteps and my staff and myself. I fill my mind with these thoughts and then I have no room for fear. I know not what lies a day’s walk ahead of me, but I know what lies in my next footstep.”

I am fighting sleep, head throbbing, body wracked with pain. I can barely see from one eye, the looming shadow of Mount Gagazet my only vague guide. I made promises and threw them all away because--

Because--

 _I am afraid, my lord._ You are gone. Jecht is gone. I do not know what lies ahead of me. I cannot even take one step. How do I face tomorrow knowing what I now know? How do I greet the sunrise knowing the truth of all we sacrificed and worked toward? If I make it to Bevelle, how do I tell your only child that her father’s sacrifice was for nothing? How do I look after two children, two worlds apart?

That night, in this place, I could not tell you that I was afraid. My pride would not allow it. I needed your words, your counsel, your friendship more than I ever had. But I was too weak to ask for it. All I have left are the memories swimming around me from this place, taking vague form in the stray pyreflies before flitting away into the dying night. The sun is gone.

All I can do is put one arm in front of the other, dragging my still breathing corpse inch by inch toward Mount Gagazet. I have been eviscerated by more than Lady Yunalesca’s blade, and to think of passing temples where we prayed, the Travel Agencies where we slept and the homes where we met with friends fills me with more pain than the gaping wound along my side. If only we had known! If only I could have done something!

I can tell how long I have been idle by the size of the pool of blood around me as the darkness submits to the gray of dawn. I cannot linger. With all of my strength, I draw my blade, leaning on it to slowly stagger to my feet. I will serve my lord until my dying moment, and until that moment I will give you nothing but everything. One foot before the other I begin the ascent of the back side of mighty Gagazet, focusing only on that next step, lest my fear and anguish take me away.

And after death itself refuses me, as I journey toward an uncertain fate in Zanarkand, I keep my eyes only on what is right before me, lest I become a fiend in my fear and anguish. Fiends have lost sight of the path, are overwhelmed by the magnitude of what might be or what could have been. They are what you could have become, my Lord, after being cast from the priesthood, isolated from society and then losing your wife and mother of your child. With your focus and determination, you made a different choice.

And so to honor yours, I make mine.


End file.
